There Are Little Kingdoms - Kevin Barry Canons

Скачать книгу

of fowl. He goes outside again and puts three lengths of ply across a muddy pathway. He paints another bit of wall. He fetches the hard-wire sweeping brush and goes through the yards, grimly janitorial. You’d swear that royalty was coming and in a sense, it is: the woman from the Organic Certification Board is on her way. He gets a cloth and a basin of water and goes out to the road, where the Meadowsweet Farm signage has lately been erected—cheerful yellows and reds, a cock crowing against a blue Iowan sky—and he wipes it down. He drags some fertiliser bags out of a ditch and piles them for a bonfire. He goes up to the house and into the kitchen and he eyeballs his wife and he says:

      ‘Mary? I’ll ask you again. How many times did you come?’

      This is no rosy-cheeked farmer. This is a gaunt and sallow man, long-armed, with livid, electric hair.

      ‘Fuck off,’ says Mary.

      He stands in the middle of the kitchen floor, with his feet planted for strength, and his neck warily hunched. He is watchful and tense, five foot eleven of peeled nerves.

      ‘All I’m saying is get it out in the open. Can’t we talk about it now, while she’s at playschool? How many times, Mary? I swear I won’t hold it against you.’

      She looks up from the computer. She scrunches her eyes tightly shut and then opens them again hopefully, as if by mercy he might have disappeared. It all reduces down to this thin sour broth: you open your eyes and there’s a nutjob on the floor in front of you.

      ‘Why are you doing this? Haven’t you enough to be doing outside? Do this much for me, John, okay? Turn around. And fuck off.’

      Wounded, his mouth a grey slit, John Martin goes again into the weather, and a filthy breeze has worked itself up, and he retreats to the shelter of the chicken shed. Poultry management is no joke at the best of times. You would be amazed what can go wrong. At present, it is the heating. He has not been able to regulate the heat for five days, and the shed is like Zaire. Unaccustomed to the luxury of such warmth, the chickens have been unpleasantly lively but this seems to be subsiding now to a kind of rattled exhaustion. They screech and gasp in a terrible, grating way.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEBLAEsAAD/2wBDAAEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEB AQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQH/2wBDAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEB AQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQH/wAARCAoABn4DASIA AhEBAxEB/8QAHwAAAQUBAQEBAQEAAAAAAAAAAAECAwQFBgcICQoL/8QAtRAAAgEDAwIEAwUFBAQA AAF9AQIDAAQRBRIhMUEGE1FhByJxFDKBkaEII0KxwRVS0fAkM2JyggkKFhcYGRolJicoKSo0NTY3 ODk6Q0RFRkdISUpTVFVWV1hZWmNkZWZnaGlqc3R1dnd4eXqDhIWGh4iJipKTlJWWl5iZmqKjpKWm p6ipqrKztLW2t7i5usLDxMXGx8jJytLT1NXW19jZ2uHi4+Tl5ufo6erx8vP09fb3+Pn6/8QAHwEA AwEBAQEBAQEBAQAAAAAAAAECAwQFBgcICQoL/8QAtREAAgECBAQDBAcFBAQAAQJ3AAECAxEEBSEx BhJBUQdhcRMiMoEIFEKRobHBCSMzUvAVYnLRChYkNOEl8RcYGRomJygpKjU2Nzg5OkNERUZHSElK U1RVVldYWVpjZGVmZ2hpanN0dXZ3eHl6goOEhYaHiImKkpOUlZaXmJmaoqOkpaanqKmqsrO0tba3 uLm6wsPExcbHyMnK0tPU1dbX2Nna4uPk5ebn6Onq8vP09fb3+Pn6/9oADAMBAAIRAxEAPwD4Ht7v S7S0ns7qz1bS9G1S1cxX/h+UX0X9ttNlTrGnSNG7w3EIVJJJbmNl/wBZHlipSt4asPGWi6jOut6F D4h1LU49nh+2k1UrFDYuGZJbrT0PmY8sB4mklgjjVnkkZlhw2UYry7l1LURLd6fo0GrXGnaxYQTR Wus2upLI8jC50WRpJLa0jU7P3rIUKbHZGKF44ryx1vxaZJJNU1G6u4GhupNSIsINagaER+XFNDJM qLbxuPOZJEcJuAVH5r9jq5A6mXcP4ujjY1f9ZnlmbZLhsZn+FxVXF43JcThoYPD4HJMZWrZZmmRK pGVDMMHT4kwUK2MxVXEzweNqS+sYT/AyVSthYVcHjcHgo/V6FeGOrSydQxVTC4yrUxNWtjcbz069 HMY06/s6dXEUsbWjg50qUY4bD4SlSp3NK06C88TGy8Qx2/8AZV688V5a6XPPeadpF6Y3IubePSp8 X6QsqytDIZopMMQjOFYZNrrOp38N1pFlosFvNp1z/Z7G8lP2S7WWTy4ZH00N5dvcGMlIzBsTAQCF XDFuw8C3OkeE/FUl94N1q28OtodvNqKm8sWm0+PXEjlRrbS7y+nma+jiiYx26BBcTSExJDKxVpr1 1N4o0p9S8R/EnQorrXfEMtxf2KRwjTte33dws1nqllZxZvBLPIpNpI9nAiqxezcqisvi4nFY7EZz HMOKKtDB0MfkVTFw4Ux+Y4iksLjsqxEaWbuOTYKhn+Lw2C5Zxxvsa

Скачать книгу